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Etsy is a marvelous place to spend countless hours looking and still find amazing items for great prices! The lovely thing about Etsy in my opinion is that you are actually communicating with the owners and creators of the pieces you are buying. This past week I had the joy and pleasure to come in contact with the store “Craft Cuts”. You can visit their store by clicking HERE or on the picture. Craft cuts specializes in handmade/ hand painted items that are cut and made just to your liking. Initialed monogramed items are really in right now. With Craft Cuts, you can do just that with your house or apartment. They make them in all sizes with as many letters as you want and in any color you want. I can guarantee you that when you work with Craft Cuts.com you will find exactly what you are looking for and more! Not only do they have letters, but they also have other cute things like mustaches and greek letters for every sort of occasion! Check out my adorable letters I just received in the mail. You can also visit Craft Cuts directly at their website www. craftcuts.com.

When you love something or love doing something, it is all you can think about. Sometimes you even get scared thinking about how much you like it and you start to second guess your judgment. Now I know something like a passion for photography isn’t exactly what you thought I was talking about, but I really can’t stop wanting to take pictures. Let me be honest, I am a complete beginner at this. Most of the time I have no idea what I am doing. The catch is that I can’t stop researching, watching youtube videos, and thinking about new poses or things I could do. If you want to see my progress from about 4 months ago to now, doing maybe session a month, then click on Aubrey Reiner Photography and go check me out! I really appreciate feedback no matter what your personal experience is with photography. Even a good job really makes me feel good! I would love to make it into a small side business for a little extra cash throughout college. If you have any tips or things I could do better then please let me know! I appreciate ALL support 🙂 Here are a few pictures from my three most recent sessions… Check out the full albums by clicking on the pictures! Thanks guys 😀

Howdy Y’all! I am here to show you how I decorated and organized my apartment so that you can too with your own! Read Moving, Moving, and more MOVINGto catch up with what is going on in the blog and with this post!

Let’s start with MY bedroom!

My first rule is that if your bedroom is an odd shape or size it is perfectly alright to put your bed in the corner of your room. I always prefer it to centered in my room but in this case the room is too narrow for that!

One of the most important things to me is having a clean and neat desk! I was able to throw away a bunch of stuff that I didn’t need anymore just by going through the drawers and shelves. As you can see, I always have a collection of hand sanitizers within reach. Not only do they look cute but they also keep my hands clean which means they help keep my desk cleaner! I try not to over clutter my desk because I know it will get that way during the school year. If you start out with it minimal and clean then it will be much easier to keep it that way.

I am not a girl with very much jewelry, but I do know that jewelry gets cluttered and tangled way to easily in a box or even on one of those fancy hangers. This is my secret way to not only display my jewelry, but to also keep it organized and easily accessible next to my bathroom. All you need are some command hooks and a small wall space in your bathroom, closet, or even your room and tada instant jewelry display!

Another thing I am trying to accomplish on this “clean slate” is keeping my bathroom not only clean but also neat and simple. At my old apartment, I had a bad habit of keeping everything on my bathroom counter. It got messy really fast and it also was just too much going on in a small space. Now I keep everything I need in a medicine cabinet, drawer, or under my sink for a cleaner and fresher look! What do you think?

We actually have a laundry room in this apartment! You guys may not think this is a big deal but when you have lived with stackable washers in the middle of your living room for a year, you would be excited too. We came up with a brilliant idea about how to cover the water heater so it wasn’t so ugly. We put a twist on a Pinterest idea that we both liked. The next cool thing about our laundry room is another pinterest inspired idea. We bought a shoe rack and it now store all of our cleaning supplies! This definitely helps keep the areas under all of our sinks not as cluttered!

Our kitchen has so much counter space we didn’t know what to do with it all! This is a good thing in our opinion though 🙂 We tried to keep it an simple and neat as possible.

Our living room is also a work in progress. We took a bookshelf to add more organization and put it next to the couch. That way we don’t have to just leave stuff sitting on the coffee table or kitchen counters leading to a dirtier house!

Let me know how you chose to decorate and organize your house!! I would love to get some new ideas! 🙂

There comes a time in everybody’s life where they must pack up everything they own and move. Whether you’re moving five minutes away or to a different country, the process is all the same. I realized that everything up to unpacking and getting settled in to your new place is just absolutely dreadful. The sad part about packing is that you finally must face the fact that you have been hoarding useless things for the past several years. You also must realize that you have been ultra lazy and the hundreds of little things you stuffed under your bed when you were “cleaning” are coming back to haunt you. My attack on this horrendous mess was to take a trash bag and throw out everything that I had not seen or needed in months. Although I still have a lot of crap that I probably do not need, I definitely feel de-cluttered.

(That is not an actual picture of my apartment… I’m not that messy!)

The next terrible part about moving is taking EVERYTHING out and then having to take EVERYTHING back in to a new apartment/house. I must have burned who knows how many calories carrying stuff down the stairs moving out and then right back up a new flight of stairs at the new apartment. The real fun starts when you get everything inside your new apartment. You get to start on a clean slate, organize everything differently, try some new things you saw on pinterest, and actually have the energy and motivation do all the stuff you hadn’t wanted to do for the past year. Then you get to decorate which in my opinion the best thing ever! If you’re interested in seeing my new and improved apartment with all of my organizing techniques, then say no more! Click Organization Frustration to see my hopefully helpful hints on how to organize and stay organized in a new or old apartment!

My friend Kelsey and I have decided this week that we are going to get in shape and actually work out. We both decided that first off trying to work out alone is really hard for us, and second of all we need someone to teach us how to work out. So that is how we came to join Piranha Fitness center. The rumor is, is that you can burn up to 950 calories doing Zumba at Piranha. WOW!

They have classes all day everyday that range for Zumba, to Insanity, to abs classes, and even yoga! We started off with the Insanity class (not sure why we picked the hardest one to try first) and it was…insane! You have several blocks of workouts you do with certain reps and sets inside those blocks. Each block is repeated 3 times and I was feeling the burn after just the warm up! Let’s just say that we didn’t last very long before we had to go rent one of Piranha’s towels. I definitely did feel the repercussions from the workout the next day though. I took that as a great sign that I at least was working hard and got something out of it. Since then, we have attended a piloxing class and last night an abs class. I sure do hurt all over, but I know that I will thank myself in the long run. So if you have a little extra time and are like me, then get up and join a fitness center that has tons of classes. It sure does motivate me a lot more to work harder!

Is it just me or do you guys always get super addicted to songs really fast? Today I have found a new favorite. I was bowling and this song came on and I was immediately hooked. I was then determined to find the song so that I could download it ASAP and listen to it on repeat (I have a problem with doing this). I couldn’t find who sang it so it wasnear impossible to find this God sent lullaby I had just heard. A few days later, after I had abandoned all hope of finding this amazing tune I was casually flipping through the new social media app Vine, and came across what looked like a boy band singing this song. Two minutes later and a thank you prayer to God, I finally had Chloe (You’re the One I Want)by Emblem3 downloaded.

I can’t stop listening to it and I am driving my roommate crazy. I went into stalker mode and already have the entire music video almost memorized by heart and the faces of the three adorable X Factor contestants graved into my mind. I may sound like I have just found the long lost Atlantis, but I can assure you that I am not ashamed of my new found boy band obsession! Check out the music video below of my new favorite song.

So in the past 24 hours I decided to try something new on Netflix. I have heard so many greats things about this one TV show called The Walking Dead, that I figured I needed to make my own opinion of it. Now I am not the type of girl that is very into scary movies, gore, or anything of that matter, but this TV show was very intriguing. I’m going to tell it to you straight… this is a very gory show. The makeup and effects are amazing, but nevertheless, it is bloody and gross. The story line is one that keeps you on your toes and rooting for the main characters. There is just something about Zombies that make me feel uncomfortable though. Is it because I think that a zombie apocalypse could happen? Maybe, maybe not…but I do know that watching this show made me feel a little jumpy and uneasy about the fate of the world. I told my roommate today that if this ever did happen that I would most definitely be one of the first people to go.

This show has pulled at my heartstrings a few times and has brought me deathly close to tears in only the second episode. You find yourself rooting for these poor people and the show keeps throwing curve balls just when you think everything is starting to be somewhat OK. I would recommend it to people who are not eating lunch first of all or people that are frightened or disgusted by blood and guts. Other than those few details, I would say that the high thrill this show seems to give it’s viewers is what keeps them coming back and watching the next seasons. You just have to know what becomes of your beloved main characters. I can see why so many people have become absolutely addicted to it. All I have to say is to try it out. You will know in the first episode if it is your type of thing or not. Trust me.

I am sorry to all of my followers that I have been fairly quiet over the past couple of weeks! I have had sooo many things on my plate and finally they are all winding down. Here are some of the things I have had to deal with this past month…

1) Impending doom of finals and teachers giving extra work near the end of the semester. UBER STRESSFUL

2) Working on my Photography portfolio

3) Started a new job as a waitress at Friday’s

4) Went to Colorado for a weekend to visit my wonderful Aunt and Uncle

5) Lost my wallet in the airport (Worst thing ever)

So I am sorry blog world! I will do my best to start blogging again! Hopefully finals don’t prove to be as bad as I think they will be!

I took “Best Friend” pictures for the first time on Saturday! It was my first time to take pictures of a group of people so I was VERY excited to see how they turned out… Here are some of my favorites from the shoot! If you want to see the whole album then just click on the picture!! 🙂

Hey guys! So This week I decided to start ANOTHER blog called Aubrey Reiner Photography. I have always had a love for photography and decided I wanted to share it with the world! I would really appreciate it if you went over and checked it out, or maybe even followed it?? 🙂 You guys are seriously AWESOME! Thanks for all your support.

This week I was in line to get on of my workout gym’s famous fruit smoothies. As I was standing there, I decided that I was going to try and make my own delicious, healthy, and filling smoothie. So I got out of line and headed to my grocery store to see what I could come up with. After wandering the isles of HEB, I finally had the ingredients I wanted to try. This was going to be my masterpiece. When I have made smoothies in the past, they always ended up too thick, or really watery, not sweet enough/too sweet, and all around not very awesome. I have absolutely nailed it on the head this time!

What do you want in a smoothie? For me There are 3 rules, 1) Eliminate the fat content 2) Get antioxidants and other good “stuff” from fresh fruit 3) Make sure that it tastes good and has a creamy like texture. If you follow my recipe, you will find all of these in your smoothie.

1) When making your own smoothie, you want to make sure the ingredients are affordable and easily accessible. These ingredients are at every store and there are plenty of brands for you to choose from! I started by finding a base for my smoothie. In the past I had used juice which I found to over power the smoothie and make it too watery. This time I headed for the yogurt section. After looking at yogurts I finally decided that I would get a pre-made smoothie and use it as my base. This would make my smoothie creamy instead of watery. To eliminate fat gain, I purchase a “light” smoothie” which included no fat at all! Next I headed to milk. I didn’t want my smoothie to be so creamy it was hard to drink. I purchased FAT FREE milk to make sure I followed the first rule I made which was making sure there was NO FAT in my smoothie. Next I went to the frozen section and bought “Organic Mixed Berries”. This saves you A LOT of money when your other option would be buying individual containers of fruit. The package I bought had no additives, which means that I am not adding excess sugars to my smoothie. This is following rule NUMER 2. After you find the fruit you want, you’re done at the grocery store! YAY!!

2) To make the smoothie you need to grab your blender! Lay out your ingredients in front of you to make sure you have everything. It should look like the photo above! Next what I want you to do is to take your yogurt smoothie you purchased and dump the entire bottle into your blender! The yogurt smoothie I purchased was Activia’s Pina Colada “light” smoothie. They have many flavors but I LOVE pina colada. The other good thing about this particular brand is that it will help your digestive system! Healthy ALL around.

3) Next you want to add the berries! I say you can do add much as you want on this part. But what I have learned is that it usually works best if you add about 1/2 to 3/4 a cup of berries into the blender. You also want to make sure that you have all the types of berries in the blender. I found that the larger strawberries like to hide at the bottom of the bag, and they are what gives your smoothie a lot of the sweetness that you will want.

4) Next add the milk and the ice. I have found that adding as much milk or a little under as the yogurt content works nicely. Then to top it off only add TWO cubes of ice. If you add more it will be choppy in your smoothie and make it too thick. Depending on how big your smoothie is looking, you could add three if two is not enough… But you can always add more later when you have started blending. The result of all these ingredients should look like the picture to the right above.

5) MIX THE SMOOTHIE – Hopefully there is no need for more explanation here. Make sure you at least mix it for twenty or more seconds.. Even shake it around a bit.

6) The end result in your blender should look like so….

7) The end result should be creamy yet still drinkable. It should taste absolutely yummy or you did something wrong! This smoothie has 4 or more grams of protein that will help rebuild your muscles after a long workout!

I hope you enjoyed! If you have suggestions or tried it a different way, please comment below!!

Is it just me or has Taco Bell gotten a little inappropriate with their sauce packet sayings? They use to be cute and quirky little sayings, but now they are intended to be sexual in my opinion. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

So I actually did ALL my laundry yesterday. This is a major accomplishment in my life since I always feel like I am doing laundry! The sad part about this, is that I now know that all my clothes do not fit in my closet. I actually had to go out and buy a “shirt holder thing” so that I could at least hang the majority of my “nicer” clothes and fold my t-shirts. The result was even more horrifying than before.

Let me ask you a question… feel free to comment the answer below. HOW MANY T-SHIRTS DO YOU OWN? And, “HOW MANY T-SHIRTS IS TOO MUCH? I would like to know your opinion on this… The reason I ask is because I realized that 90% or my wardrobe is t-shirts. If I had to guess how many I had, I would probably put the number at about 60? Maybe higher?? The picture is of my new “shirt holder thing”, and the sight is frightening. If that doesn’t make you squirm, then here is another little piece of information for you…. THOSE ARE NOT ALL MY T-SHIRTS! Each little section on the holder maxes out at about 12 shirts… I actually ran out of room on the holder and had to get drawers to stuff the rest of them in. Now you might be wondering where I accumulated all of these t-shirts…? Well, various places. High school band, color guard, golf, NHS, shattered dreams – College football, basketball, soccer, baseball – family vacations, fourth of july, almost every type of t-shirt you can think of… I have it! I think this has made me realize that I need actual clothes to wear. Nevertheless, it looks like I need to do some spring cleaning!

I know that I have already done a Man Crush post on Harry Styles and One Direction, but I thought that Harry deserves his own post since he is so absolutely lovely! He has been my main squeeze since day one… My man crush of man crushes! I just think that he is adorable and I love his deep raspy voice. Harry just recently turned 19 which means that he is in my dateable range (YAY! This is exciting news).

One of the most noticeable things about Harry Styles is his gorgeous smile. He has beautiful straight and white teeth, that he can literally knock your socks off when he smiles. Another feature that I find most appealing about Harry is his long, luscious, curly locks of hair. Most people think it is too much, but for me, I think it is just perfect. I really have a thing for men with curly hair, so that would explain my fascination with it.

One of my problems with Harry is that he tends to be quite the ladies man when it comes to dating. He not only has dated much older women than him, but also has a numerous amount of short lived relationships. Either you take the whole cake or leave it behind and I choose to take the WHOLE! Just kidding. But I seriously would love to gaze into his beautiful eyes and have him smile at me…. Ahhhhh. Sorry… back to reality now! Antoher thing that might be a problem when he decides that I am his one true love, is his many tattoos. It isn’t that I do not like tattos, it is that he has some very strange choices in tattoos. No worries though, that can be sorted out before the wedding.

One of the things I find absolutely adorable with Harry is his weird humor/personality. In One Direction’s video blogs, he seems pretty quiet and reserved, but in their music videos, he is always the one doing something funny and cute. I know I will never get the chance to meet him, but a girl can dream. LOVE YOU HARRY!

Today I am going to give you a look into my personal bathroom space and share with you the products I have learned to love and hate! I will also show you how I personalized my bathroom to make it cute and colorful!

~ Decoration – Girl Style:

So I always wanted to have the “pinterest perfect” bathroom. It needed to be bright, colorful, and organized. I would have to say that I think I accomplished these goals pretty well. I started with a shower curtain that I liked from Bed Bath and Beyond. I then found things that matched those colors. For example, my trashcan, flowers, potpourri, picture frames, towels, toothbrush holder, and even my hair dryer had to match! I bought a bathroom bookshelf (as I call them) and decided it was a perfect opportunity to add some more decor (flowers and potpourri). I found these items at a Hobby Lobby on clearance. I really liked the idea of having flowers in my bathroom. To me flowers represent cleanliness and good smells, which I wanted to be incorporated in the essence of the room. **Next I wanted to find a way to be able to organize all my makeup, hair stuff, lotion, and medicines for easy access. I found a drawer organizer at Target for cheap and decided to personalize it for my bathroom. I bought some sharpie markers and started coloring. It would give my bathroom a personalized look and would give me an easy way to store normally messy things. I organized my drawers into MAKEUP, HAIR & LOTION, and MEDICINE.

My bathroom tote I also bought at Target and again decided to decorate. I liked this idea so much that I bought about six more and decorated them for my friends with bathroom essentials for graduation presents (HUGE success)! I actually decided that instead of decorating my own tote, I let my mom decorate it so I could have something that she personalized for me at all times. These two items have saved me so much time and effort! I will always have to have something similar to them because they have made my life so darn easy. **Another accessory I LOVE in my bathroom is my Hair Appliances holder. I always run into the problem of not knowing where to keep my hair dryer, straightener, and messy brush. This solved all my problems! I was pretty cheap at Bed Bath and Beyond and has been super useful. It allows easy access to your appliances, but hides all the yucky cords and makes for a cute display!

~ Products that I LOVE:

MY MAKEUP –In this picture are the bare essentials that I use when I am putting on a face for school or hanging out. Starting on the right you have your cover girl “pencil” black eyeliner. I tend to think my eyes look better in black liner than others. It seems to make the color pop more. I usually only put liner on the top lashes and I don’t put it very thick. Too much effort and time for a normal day out in my opinion. Next we have my ultimate favorite mascara EVER. Cover Girl Lash Blast Volume has been my go to mascara for about five years now. I keep trying to try other products from Cover Girl, but none compare to the orange tube. The bristles on the brush are soft but are still firm enough to coat and separate each eyelash to my liking. Sometimes if I have an empty tube I will use the old brush to comb my eyelashes after using another mascara. You really cant go wrong with it. The green tube below is Cover Girls new mascara that is said to be a “clump crusher”. In my opinion, the bristles are too hard and it doesn’t apply enough mascara for my liking. Since I bought it, I use it and the other mascara together to at least not let it go to waste. The next mascara is a basic Cover Girl mascara. It was supposed to be both volume and length in one tube, but I have found that it is less quality that the orange tube. Nevertheless I will still use it till I run out to get my moneys worth. Next you see my traditional eyelash curler. This the mechanism is a girls best friend. It can make any type of eyelashes look longer than before. And to that, I owe it a huge thank you. Next we have my Ulta pressed face powder. I LOVE this stuff. I am still on my first case of it and I really like how it spreads evenly and looks lovely. I have not had luck in the past with face powders and finding my right shade, but this one hit my skin color right on the nose. Next we have your standard cheap brush I bought in my cosmetics isle at my grocery store. It is soft and hasn’t shed like other brushes so I am still pleased with it! ** Spritz, Sprays, and Goos – 1)If you are like me and have oily skin, you know that acne can be a problem. When I was in middle school I had bad acne and tried almost everything to cure it. If only I had known about my current face wash! I saw a commercial for it and decided to give it a try last year. I buy the generic brand because I find that it works the same for cheaper. It smells wonderful and really gives me a clean feeling after I wash my face. I LOVE it. I haven’t had any bad acne since I started using it. The only thing I recommend though is using it every morning and every night. 2) I have learned to love Bath and Body Works. If you shop right, you can get really quality stuff for cheap! My body spray and my perfume only cost me $6 all together because they were both on clearance! I absolutely love the smells and find that if I put on the body spray earlier in the morning and then spray a little perfume on top later, they make a wonderful smell! I also have a small collection of hand sanitizers of BABW. They have so many different kinds that all smell so wonderful! I love their collections of smells. 3) For my hair, I typically don’t do anything but blow dry it. But if I am feeling like scrunching my hair and making it a curly day, then I use this beach waves concoction. Be careful though, because if you get too much it will make your hair look stiff and gross. I use it when my hair is in-between the wet and dry phase. I haven’t used the diffuser yet but my hair isn’t soaking. I will have been scrunching it since I got out of the shower and it should be looking pretty fluffy and wavy by then. I spritz the beach wave spray around at the tips scrunching as I go. I then use the diffuser to try and dry the hair with the spray in it. Then after drying it, I gently spray a little more scrunching as I go. It’s more like a stiff hair spray at this point. I usually end up liking the result if I have had time to pay attention to my hair in the morning which is rare occurrence.

Thank you for reading this post on bathroom stuff! If you want to see me use the makeup products shown here, check out my tutorial video HERE. If you have anything to say about these products of products of your own, SHARE them below!!